From: "George Sherwood" 

On Sun, 17 Sep 2006 10:49:23 -0400, Rich Gauszka wrote:

> The AI report on Israel doesn't seem that unclear to me. I would say that
> both sides in this conflict were guilty of war crimes. Israel did have the
> much greater weaponry though and their targeting of the civilian
> infrastructure was an abomination. I suspect Hezbollah would have done
> something similar had they the Israeli firepower so I would just say - Hang
> em all!
>

There is no law of proportionality in war.  Meaning that Israel is not
automatically guilty because they were able to inflict more damage.  As
much as some would like you to believe, unfortunately collateral damage is
a part of war and is not a war crime.  Indiscriminately firing any type of
weapons at civilians falls directly into the war crime category.  This is
what you are seeing here.

You may say that both sides are guilty but you are looking at it from a
proportionality view that is not part of the Law of War.  While you may
think that civilians were targeted by Israel this is not even close to
being proved.  Targeting of infrastructure is also not directly a war
crime.  You can feel it was an abomination, but that doesn't make it so
under the Law of War.

George

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